La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum
The Page Museum is located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of
Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea is one of the world's most famous fossil localities,
recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct Ice Age
plants and animals in the world.
The tar in the La Brea Tar Pits comes from an underground petroleum deposit
leaking to the surface creating a four inch pool of sticky tar. The surface
becomes covered in leaves and dust, causing animals to occasionally wander
into it without knowing, sometimes becoming trapped. Predators probably gathered
around the pits in ancient times, looking for a free meal, and got stuck
themselves. A partial human skeleton was even found in the La Brea Tar Pits, a
Native American woman who lived about 9,000 years ago. Even Archeologists today
quite by accident have gotten stuck in this tar and have had to leave their boots
behind in order to escape.
More than 100 tar pits are located within the 23 acres of Hancock Park. While
most were excavated in the early 1900's, Pit 91 was reopened in 1969, and work
continues there today.
What Have Scientists Learned From Pit 91?
The annual excavation of Pit 91 at the La Brea Tar Pits has provided scientists
with extensive data on the climate and ecology of the Los Angeles Basin 28,000
years ago. Most of the plant species and many of the insect and molluscan species
are known either mainly or exclusively due to the ongoing excavation.
Excavated fossils are brought to the Paleontology Laboratory at the Page Museum
at the La Brea Tar Pits, where the public can watch scientists carefully clean,
identify, label and catalogue the fossils.
At our tour of the La Brea Tar Pits we watched the scientists work in "The
Fishbowl" a glass enclosed room in which tourists can peer in and watch the
archeologists at work. We saw Zed an extinct mammoth who had died at a nearby
creek in which asphalt needed up coating him rather well being 80% preserved.
We witnessed the giant pelvis bone being turned over for the first time by eight
scientists, which was quite a job as this pelvis bone was huge. Zed is a Colombian
mammoth and has become the first nearly intact mammoth to be found near the La Brea
tar pits with 10-feet long intact tusks. An estimated 34 mammoths have been found
previously, but only in bits and pieces.
Zed was found at that area 91 site along side the skeletons of a complete
saber-toothed cat, a giant ground sloth, and a North American lion. Zed is
about 10 feet tall at the hip and died before he reached full maturity.
This display gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life
was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago" in the Los Angeles Basin, nearby George
C. Page Museum.
La Brea Tar Pits
5801 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 934-7243
www.tarpits.org